Readers' letters - May 26

The Carillion directors have come under the spotlight for, what appears to be, a culture of greed and avarice that has seen thousands lose their jobs.

In other areas, we can see how the Government has been using every conceivable device to further continue the process of privatising the public sector – most noticeably the NHS and education.

If the British people cannot see all this, they are sleep-walking back to the grim days of the 1930s and earlier and, yes, it is the young who will pick up the tabs for this appalling ‘age of possessive individualism’ and rampant greed that is now out of control.

It is this that has liquidised the ‘vision’ of William Beveridge.

I will not venture to analyse the outcome of Brexit. However, it has sown the seeds of resentment and bitterness between the old and the young, who will pay a hefty price for all of this in the future.

I was born and lived in the good times.

I lament the way Britain is going and despair for the future of the young.

Are the ‘dreams’ of Beveridge able to be salvaged? Not without a drastic change in our attitudes, politics and our ‘collective’ re-think of the future.

At the moment it is an “I’m alright Jack” Britain with little concern for others. We have become a selfish, materialistic society.

Other EU countries care for their elderly relatives.

Old people are cast aside like unwanted dolls.

Brave new world!

Peter Asquith-Cowen

Address supplied

Plastic mess at fracking site

The county is fighting the spread of plastic – or fighting how it is disposed of.

We’re fighting plastic on the beaches, on the roads, in the countryside – everywhere. So everyone’s on the front line in this battle... or so I thought, until I drove past the anti-fracking site on Preston New Road.

There’s plastic festooning the roadside and hedgerows like it’s going out of fashion! Plastic bottles strung up all over the place!

Parts of Preston New Road look like that camp outside Calais, making the countryside look like a tip – a rubbish tip. Can’t the protesters see the damage this is doing to their cause?

Who’s going to clean up this mess? Whose idea was it to hang plastic bottles everywhere? Can we have a rates reduction due to having to see the spoiling of our countryside? The messages now look tired, banal and, in many instances, infantile.

So can we please have this plastic battle take place on Preston New Road too?

What a mess!

Mr P Webberley

Warton

Businessmen should lead

Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest self-made man, should head up our Brexit negotiation team, joined by Lord Digby Jones, former director-general of the CBI, Lord Bamford, chairman of JCB, inventor Sir James Dyson and Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin.

These businessmen know how to conduct themselves and would be able to stand up to the EU.

They would tell them that if they want to trade with us and get our divorce money, they would have to accept our conditions.

Harry Brooke

Address supplied

A first time

for everything

One morning, I observed an unusual occurrence.

At 8.40am, I looked through my front window as a young mother was dragging her infant child towards school.

She (the mother) did not have a mobile phone stuck to her ear. There is always a first time for everything.

Mike Picewicz

Blackpool